Svidler sees off danger

By Malcolm Pein

12:01AM GMT 14 Nov 2006

The placings remained unchanged as all five games were drawn in the fifth round of the Mikhail Tal Memorial at Moscow.

The leader Ruslan Ponomariov produced an unusual line against Peter Svidler’s Gruenfeld Defence and created a dangerous looking passed queen’s pawn. If this pawn survives too long in the Gruenfeld Black is usually impaled upon it but Svidler blockaded, surrounded and then captured it to draw comfortably.

Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen aged just fifteen looks increasingly at home in his first Super Tournament and scored his fourth draw as Alexey Shirov showed his respect for the youngster by playing the solid Petroff Defence. In their previous meeting Shirov defended the Closed Ruy Lopez and was blown off the board with a hail of sacrifices in true ‘Shirovian’ fashion.